Present day telephony voice networks, have a network built around circuit switches, end offices, a toll network, tandem switches, and twisted wires. These voice networks are referred to as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or plain old telephone service (POTS). Due to bandwidth limitations of plain old telephone service (POTS), there is an inherent inability to efficiently integrate multiple types of media such as telephony, data communication for personal computers (PC), and television (TV) broadcasts. Accordingly, a new broadband architecture is required. This new architecture gives rise to a new array of user services.
Further, due at least in part to limitations in the architecture of such telephony voice networks, various features offered by the telephony voice networks are of limited value. For example, although some telephony voice networks offer a call hold feature, typically only a very small number of calls may be put on hold by a party at any one time. A reason for this limitation is that each call on a conventional network requires a certain amount of reserved resources (e.g., a real or virtual circuit dedicated to each call), even when the call is placed on hold. Conventional networks must therefore be designed to have sufficient resources to handle such features as call hold; however, there is a relatively low practical limit to the number of calls that may be placed on hold at any one time. Moreover, conventional telephony systems typically do not provide for call hold unless the call hold feature is implemented via electronics built into the telephone itself.
There is therefore a need to provide an improved call hold feature in a telephony network, and in particular, in the communication system of the present invention. The call hold feature should be available to IP telephony users regardless of whether they are connecting to system using a traditional analog POTS telephone, a smartphone, a multimedia phone, or any other type of telephony terminal.